Coral Gables Villages

[2] The original plan, devised in collaboration with banker and former Ohio governor Myers Y. Cooper, called for 14 villages at a cost of $75 million, with financing by the American Building Corporation of Cincinnati.

[3] The Villages were developed during the foundational real estate boom of the 1920s, and subsequently came to a halt by the end of the decade due to a cascading series of factors in its later half that included the 1926 Miami Hurricane, the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, the arrival of the Mediterranean fruit fly, and the onset of the Great Depression with the Wall Street crash of 1929.

[8] The proposed $500 million, 900,000-square-foot project was located in downtown Coral Gables by Ponce Circle and blocks from Miracle Mile.

Though large, the mostly residential complex was scaled to retain the localized charm of the Village Project and prominently implemented several elements to support the original spirit and vision of Merrick's plans.

They centrally incorporated and renovated a 1926 Merrick-era three-story art center building located at 2901 Ponce de Leon Boulevard.

The project was later renamed "Mediterranean Village" and continued to be plagued with increasing issues, until it was finally bought by the Jose Cuervo Spirits-linked Agave Holdings Development firm.

Agave demolished the completed portions of Sanchez' Old Spanish Village and used its consolidated foundation to develop a new, substantially expanded and modern high-end commercial project called "The Plaza Coral Gables", which would grow to encompass 2.25 million square feet.